My two cents about financial advice

Sometimes you ask yourself if you can do it or you really need professional help? I was lucky enough to study economy for many years, but not all are so fortunate. Of course, every skill can be learned. The problem is that a lot of the people i know lack basic financial education. And they need some advice. Here is the trick. Everybody got an opinion. My uncle Paul try to give me advice all the time, yet he is barely end his meets every month. My postman told me he know a lot about investing. Everyone know. But not every one apply. As Cicero said "Advice is judged by results, not by intentions. If we listen to some others much more clever than us, here are the financial advisers not to be trusted on the long term.
1. People who lack necessary qualification and proven results.
2. Someone who build his wealth in another business or real estate, because stock investment is something different.
3. Authors and writers, because they are better at writing, not investing.
4. Academics, because they have some interesting theories, but their experience lack the practice , and real life is reacting in a surprising way sometimes.
5. Someone who is selling investment products, because the inherent conflict of interest that biases the advice you receive (true for most stock brokers and financial planners).
6. A person who made his wealth through marketing investment advice instead of actually investing

The best recommendation is given to you by proven actual results, and often you can see the FIRE in their eyes. I hope this helped you now, as it would helped me 10-20 years ago, when i did so many mistakes. The trick is to always check who are the best in the field, and to learn from them. Aim for the stars. If your adviser will tell you how can you lose your money first, before you find how you gain more, then he/she is a good one. If is telling you about the risk management and preserving capital, personalized to your needs, you already feel like winning the lottery.

 Questions to ask first, before you ask someone to help:

1: Is the adviser already successfully doing exactly what he is advising you to do?

2: Is the adviser still “walking the talk”, or is he just “marketing the talk?”

3: Will the adviser provide documented proof that his advice works?

4: What is the adviser background, education, training, skills, and experience?

5: Has the advice been tested and proven successful through multiple market cycles?

6: Does the advice provide a balanced viewpoint with both positive and negative attributes or is it a one-sided sales job?

7: Does the advice over-simplify the inherently complex nature of investing in an effort to make the sale?

8:Is the advice personalized to your needs or is it generic?

9: Is the advice a complete investment process or a half-truth?

10: Does the advice focus primarily on risk management and capital preservation?

11: How is the adviser compensated? What are his conflicts of interest?

12:  Is the advice based strictly on facts or does it include meaningless opinions?

FIRE-getting physical

It is normal for everyone to want to enjoy his hard earned newly achieved financial independence for as long as possible. In order to do that, we need to do more than have the money. As many of us will start to live the life after the age of 30, or even 40, we will need to take care of our health, physically, emotionally, mentally, and to exercise minimally to stay in shape.
My resolution:
1. I will try to go to sleep at 22:00 and wake up around 6:00.
2. I will try to cook and eat healthy, avoiding to much salt and sugar.
3. Running sessions 2-3 every week, at least, and freeletics exercises, at least twice a week.
That is  is for the moment.
See you around!
G.

Quote of the day

“The stock market should not be viewed as a way of making money. Working is how money is made—saving and investing is how it’s kept.” —E.J. Smith

Is that true? Or is just a reminder of another time, and another world? Who will agree with what is said here? Personally i think that the previous quote is not one of actuality , and this wise man used to have the pattern of thinking that we need to work for 30-40 years and then retire, when we are old and we cannot work anymore. So much changed, so much dissipated to make place for the newcomers. I like all this trend of FIRE (financial independence/retire early) and i hope that our number will grow, and more and more will start their search of a happy independent life.
Me, for this year i will just try to pay my last credit card, and reach 6k new wealth. And run 5k. If we are to speak in thousands. Only 3 months left, such eventful months for me. And my side hustle at the moment: work overtime. Not too clever, but effective.
Felling hopeful, isn't it?

See you soon.
G.

Mind games

I feel like taking a kind of break next week, after i just finished and 80 hours/workweek, a far cry from Tim Ferris 4 hour workweek. Compared with my last one, my next 37 hours work week look like a walk in the park. But i hope i reach my goals with this, as i will go in a well deserved, and seemingly expensive, holiday. I need to, it is my little brother wedding, so a bit of mayhem is welcome. Anyway, this is scheduled for mid november, i still have time for a side hustle until then.
Meanwhile i try to work on my second book, and despite my slow progress, i will estimate i am at 50% completion. I also try to invest a bit of my time in my development, as i booked a 3 day training with T. Harv Eker, something that sound interesting enough, fancy named Millionaire Mind Intensive.

On top of this, i would like, hmm, poor choice of words, let's try again, I MUST finish this month and the other 2 months left from this year on a positive monthly balance. I am doing my best at the moment, working hard and relaxing even harder. We will all see what the future brings.

P.S. I miss a little market value jump of Bitcoin, as i sold everything on the last month high and i forget to buy it back when was low enough. Eh, no need to worry, i will do it next time. I said to me, but something is still there inside of me, almost crying for the lost opportunity.

Shave like your Grandpa(and save doing this)

I am willing to try this as a new ( old) method of save money and have a great shaving experience. Seems that all i need for a top experience is one badger hair type brush, one safety razor, one soap and stainless soap bowl and 100 razors. Estimate cost - £50-60. At the moment i use Gillette Proglide with razor cartridge - annual estimate cost - £120. I know that i save (only) 60 pounds, but friends of mine that already used this method told me that it is all about the shaving experience. Beware: it will take 1-2 weeks to learn this new skill.

Bonus: Times is money! What is this saying make you thinking? Because most of the readers of this blog probably are interested in early retirement and financial independence. Working hard now in order to save time later. But what about the other point of view? How do you treat your time? What is your average ROI for let's say one week of your life? Make a journal and track this. You will be surprised. Hint: there are some things money can't buy, and one of them is health (probably). Looking from this point of view, sleep is the most awesome time investment. Confusing? I just started. Do you want to do to much, but you do not have enough time? You know how to deal with money debt, i presume, so why to not do the same with your time debt? Because in the end all you need to remember is that Time is money, and the most amazing thing money can buy is Time. My most important goal (and yours i'd like to believe) is for me to be happy, and to do what is the most fulfilling, pleasure giving experience in life. And in order to do this i need Time. So, why not to give it the same importance as we give to Money, and realize that what we want to achieve doing this is Freedom and a happy life, because why not to admit it, sometimes we forget Bruce Le advice to watch the Moon, not the finger that point to it.

See you soon. Have a good night.

G.

Active vs passive

At the moment most of my monthly money are coming from active sources, something like 95% of it, with only 5% coming from passive income. I do not know what others think, but even after my early retirement, i still see myself as having at least 20-25% of my income coming from active sources. I know, in theory the best option is to have 100% passive, but this will be very boring, isn't it? Now, related to other ideas i had this week, as i was thinking that i am going at a very slow pace, and i wanted to work more in order to reach my goals. Somebody reminded me that in the end not money and early retirement, but our happiness is the goal, money are only the instrument we use for achieving more. And if this journey is a marathon, not a sprint, so be it. Make no sense to exhaust myself or to worry too much about missing some deadline, as they are not set in stone. I was assured that once i will start enjoying life, my productivity will increase and my goals will be achieved faster, using Mr. Bruce Lee own strategy. In order to become faster we need to slow down. I will keep you posted about this.

Added later: As a big joke from Universe, after this post i checked my accounts, I've seen that the markets are recovering the percentages lost in the last months. So i am growing after all. Hip-hip-hooray!

Choices, choices and choices

This week i faced a hard choice, but in the end the rational part of my mind took a break, and i decided to work some extra 40 hours in order to achieve what i was planning for the current month. I checked and i really, really wanted to earn more than i need to spend for what is left of this year. So, if i am not clever enough (yet) to gain more money for the same amount of time (as Ramit Sethi would say - by the way, go fast to his blog, he is giving his book "I will teach you to be rich" for free at the moment, some good ideas there), coming back, if i cannot gain more money for the same amount of time, than i will work more time for more money. But i will keep the promises done to myself. We will see how efficient this step was at the end of this month. And year.

Meanwhile, market is rising, soon will be a good time to sell some of the shares i want to get rid off, right?

And to finish the post with some nice tips, if you are looking for a new hobby like building off-grid houses, here is a blog post with some free plans links.